Jennifer Hudson had to relive the horrible 2008 murders of her mother, brother and nephew on Monday morning as the first witness to take the stand in their murder trial.
Jennifer was dressed in black and reportedly spoke so softly that the judge requested her to speak louder. Moments later the singer broke down as she recounted the family’s disdain towards William Balfour.
“Where ever he was, I tried not to be,” Jennifer said before adding, “None of us wanted her to marry him. I told her over and over not to marry him. None of us myself, my mother, or my brother, we did not like how he treated her and I didn’t like how he treated my nephew.”
Julia Hudson took the stand and recalled Williams threats against her family after she revealed she’d moved on with another man.
“Julia, if you leave me, I will kill you. I will kill your entire family. You will be the last to die.”
Not everyone thought it was a smart move to call Jennifer Hudson to the stand first as a Chicago attorney puts it,
“For better or worse it increases the importance of the case in jurors’ minds,” he said. “Now the jury knows everything about her and that she’s in the courtroom only accentuates that this is an important case.”
Hudson was sitting next to her fiance David Otunga when the 911 tapes of her sister Julia screaming ‘My momma, my momma’ played – according to court reporters the former American Idol star clinched her package of tissues and put her head down sobbing.
